Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South

Abstract

Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South. By Brian Ward. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. Pp. xiv, 437. Foreword by John David Smith, acknowledgements, abbreviations, introduction, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.) At the height of the civil rights movement, radio, more so than television or print media, served as African Americans' main source of news and entertainment. Scholars, however, have generally overlooked this essential element of African-American life. Brian Ward, in Radio and the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South, fills this significant gap in the historiography of the civil rights movement with a richly detailed analysis of the role radio played in the black freedom struggle during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Ward's book is divided into three chronological parts. In part one, he examines the ways national civil rights organizations, namely the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the National Urban League, attempted to use radio between 1930 and 1960 to rally white support for the fight against Jim Crow. He also looks at efforts by white organizations, specifically the Commission on Interracial Cooperation and the Southern Regional Council, to better race relations through racially progressive programs. Ward's exhaustive research makes clear that the programs that these groups sponsored challenged racial stereotypes and social norms. His claim that these programs "helped to change the nation's attitudes toward African Americans and southern racial practices," however, is less than convincing given the near total refusal of southern radio stations to air them and the enduring indifference to problems confronting African Americans in places where these programs were broadcast (p. 22). Also, while the effort of civil rights organizations to win airtime for black programs is both important and fascinating, to say that it was "foundational" for black protest, as does Ward, is a stretch in light of the fact that those who participated in the bus boycotts of the 1950s and the students who ignited the direct action protests of the 1960s were unlikely to have heard many, if any, of these broadcasts. Part one, therefore, tells us less about the origins of the civil rights movement than Ward maintains. Part two considers how civil rights groups, individual activists, and sympathetic broadcasters used radio to support and report on southern black activism during the peak years of the civil rights struggle. …